The moment it came out of my mouth I wanted to sink into the cold plastic and die. I couldn’t tell how old the girl (woman? are we women now?) was—she seemed about my age but so much more effortlessly cool. Her dark brown hair was cropped short on one side, her curls chin-length and bouncy on the other, the ends of them kissing her jawline, making me want to reach out and touch. She was wearing a tank top with a graphic of the Iron Man helmet on it and jorts cut off at the knee and her legs were all scuffed up from where she’d crashed. She had a pierced eyebrow and bright brown eyes that were filled with such incredible warmth, I could feel my face getting red.

Or maybe that was just because I told this hot girl that I was journaling. Like a thirteen-year-old. But she just smiled and gave a little nod and said, “Cool, cool. That’s cool.”

I don’t know that I believed her that it’s cool, but I found myself smiling in return.

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you a writer?”

“Trying to be,” she said, grinning. “Poet, more specifically.”

A poet. This cute girl with the longboard and the warm brown eyes is a poet. Kill me.

“Oh wow,” I said, the blush on my cheeks getting to a truly lava-like degree. “That’s amazing.”

“I don’t know about that.” She laughed. “It’s not exactly the most lucrative career, but there are worse ways to spend your time in college than reading Márquez and going to spoken-word nights.”

She smiled at me like we were in on a private joke, like I would immediately understand what she was getting at. My stomach dropped—this always happens. Anytime I meet someone new my age, they just assume I’m in college. That’s all anyone can talk about. College college college. But I’m not in college because a) who can afford that level of debt and b) why would a chef need a liberal arts degree?

“Oh, I’m not—” I started, before promptly falling unconscious.

THE GODDAMNED TIMING OF THIS THING I SWEAR.

So, on the plus side, I guess, passing out in an urgent care usually leads to someone, you know, checking on you and wondering why the hell a girl with a broken wrist went off to dreamland. I’m wondering that still. I can barely remember the dream—it was fuzzy even while it was happening, blurred and cracked around the edges, like I was watching a broken TV—but there were two men in snowy woods, blood … a helmet. I swear I’d seen the men before, somewhere, but it slips away if I think about it too hard.